Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Future of Space Exploration (1998)

What's important is that we landed on the moon. We made a commitment and people remember that worldwide. Should we go back to the moon? Is that a viable goal? We'll go back to the moon in a logical way as we prepare to go to Mars. We might be able to justify going to the moon for the lunar ice and then see what happens, but I think that would be a mistake. I think the thing that we have to do is to make a commitment to reduce the cost, make a commitment to reusability, realistic reusability, not single stage to orbit. That's pushing technology too far right now. We need two stage reusability. We need to define a next-generation shuttle, and we need it to do a profit-making business. A profit-making business is tourism in space. And in order to make a profit by putting people into that second stage, you have to have 80 or 100 people. That's not what NASA is going to want to design the next-generation shuttle for. We have to define it for the American

people, for the people around the world, for a new industry. And if it's two stage and we're putting 100 people up there, we're going to want to fly it quite rapidly, get it back on the ground again soon. So it's only up there for one day, maybe two. Because it could be very cramped because we have to have paying customers in there, and it's going to cost a lot of money. It's going to be for the wealthy. That's not going to be very attractive unless we use my scheme of having a lottery to pick one or two percent of the passengers. That's what Share Space Foundation is all about. Why do I say two stage? Because once you get 100 people up there, many times you want to keep them up there for a week. How do you get a hotel up there for people to stay at and a week? The way we build the space station, five years, 50 launches, no way. You're going to have to have a reusable heavy lift rocket. How do you get that? You take that first stage rocket

of the two stage and you put four of them around an external tank. Now you have a heavy lift rocket that those four come back and land. The other part goes into orbit. We bring the engines down and we use that big tank plus the whole payload to make a hotel for 150 or 200 people. And that's a profit-making business. That's tourism. That's a hotel, a resort business. Now we build the reusable heavy lift rocket that'll take us to the moon and to Mars. That's the way we have to do things. That's great. That's good. Finally,